Planet Fear
by Ghiaman
Summary: Picard recieves a lesson in the ecology of the planet Raef.


Picard squinted when the hood was finally pulled off his head. The light coming in through the windows was quite bright. He shifted a little in his chair, but could not find a comfortable position with his hands bound behind his back.

As Picard's eyes came into focus he recognized the man called Dregen leaning against a large, important looking desk. Behind the desk were floor to ceiling windows looking down upon a city. There were fruit trees and a large stream running through the middle of the town. It looked nothing like Raef.

Had they moved him to another planet? There wasn't enough time. Picard had been in the Eco village where Bastan told him the history, how the planet Raef died. Bastan said it was because of the Destroyers, that their greed and desire for a more comfortable life polluted and killed the planet.

Then the Destroyers came, as Bastan said they did from time to time. They usually came right after a birthing to take the new child. Bastan said it was because the Destroyers continued their wasteful and short sighted lifestyles, that they polluted their own bodies now and could no longer give birth. That was why Bastan had been so suspicious of Picard. The Chieftain thought Picard might be one of them, because a birth had occurred less than a month ago, but it was a hard birth and the child had not survived. The Destroyers came anyway, but not for a child, for Picard.

The Destroyers had bound the Captain and pulled a hood over his head. He was thrown into some sort of land vehicle and driven away. But the ride had not been very long, and Picard had never felt the sensation of a transporter beam before he was yanked out of the vehicle and carrier to this room where he sat for some time. There were other technologies to convey people across great distances quickly, but not on this planet, Picard thought. So he was on Raef, but no part of Raef the Enterprise had detected from orbit. The city below looked full of life.

"Where do you come from?" Degren asked.

Picard gave his cover story, "I'm Legit, a trader from a village east of the Calusa ridge."

"Even the fool Bastan saw through that story. We tested your blood. You are not from this planet." Dregen walked behind his desk and opened a device on his desk. He pressed a few controls and then rotated the device so Picard could see the screen. "I think you're from here."

It didn't make sense, on the surface this culture showed no signs of being this advanced. But Picard was staring at the screen of a small computer that displayed an image of the Enterprise.

"I'll take that stunned expression on your face as a yes." Dregen smiled. "We're not as backward as the Eco led you to believe, are we?"

"What is this place?" Picard asked. "Why can't we see it from space?"

"We're in a cavern, well below the surface of the planet." Dregen pointed towards the city out his window. "You're looking at the last bastion of true civilization on Raef."

"A cavern? I see a blue sky out that window."

"It's artificial. We bring in real sunlight with shafts and mirrors, and then reflect it off the city's dome."

"Where did you get this level of technology?" Picard asked.

Dregen leaned across his desk and tapped his head. "From here, from our science, and from a desire to make our home like the one destroyed a century and a half ago. Now answer my question, where do you come from."

"It is enough to know I am not of this planet. My people's Prime Directive is one of non-interference with less advanced races. If I tell you more I could pollute your culture, insight mass panic, any number of undesirable consequences."

Dregen leaned back in his chair and laughed. "My race is on the brink of extinction. We are already facing consequences much more dire than knowing aliens exist."

Picard considered the man for a long moment before he settled on his answer. "My name is Jean Luc Picard, and that is my ship on your computer screen. I am an explorer. I came here to study your race. I am no threat to you."

"And what have you learned?"

"That this world has undergone some sort of catastrophe."

"Based on what?"

"The oral history that Bastan told me for one, the inherent fear of technology the Eco have, and the hardest piece of evidence is the ruins of your cities, they have obviously been destroyed by force. It is my belief that this planet's civilization destroyed itself."

"You're half right, Jean Luc Picard." Dregen was smiling knowingly, as if he knew exactly what Picard would say. "Please continue."

Picard shifted his wrists against the restraints; the rope was beginning to chaff. "This world burned fossil fuels, industrialized without restraint, and most probably went to war with itself over non-renewable resources. Now the majority of the surviving population has lost the knowledge of their ancestors. A dark age has enveloped the planet and it inhabitants have no way of reversing the damage to their environment."

Dregen clapped slowly when Picard was done. He smiled and rose from his seat. "I should have left you with the Eco, Jean Luc Picard. You seem to speak their language." Dregen walked around his desk, squatted down and untied the restrains around Picard's ankles and then the ones that bound his hands. "You sound as if you are quite informed about inferior cultures. Is it a specialty in your exploration?"

Picard rubbed his wrists as Dregen stood and tossed the restraints onto his desk. "Archeology, early cultures, dead cultures are of interest to me. I don't believe one culture is inferior to another."

"I disagree with you on that point, Jean Luc Picard. And by the way my name is Dregen. I disagree because the Eco are an inferior culture, at least to my own. Come and see." Dregen beckoned Picard over to his office's floor to ceiling windows. The Captain joined Dregen and looked down at the bustling metropolis below. "Do you know what we do to make this city possible? We burn hydrocarbons, we harness the energy of fusing atoms, and our scientists are even saying they will soon be able to annihilate regular matter with particles possessing the opposite of there natural charge. What effect do you, with all your knowledge of traveling to different worlds, think the result of our lifestyle is?"

Picard sighed at the hard truth. "Dregen, by your own admission you are spewing greenhouse gasses into your atmosphere, producing nuclear waste. Your lifestyle is continuing the practices that probably lead to your downfall."

Dregen laughed and nodded. "I'm sorry Jean Luc Picard, but I never imagined someone with your technology and knowledge would be such an absolutist."

"I am not an absolutist. I do not judge your people, or the Eco. I base my assessments on scientific observation."

"But you are absolutely sure of what happened to this planet, your sighs and your superior tone give you away. And what do you base your theory on? Some ruins and the history told to you by a crazed zealot?"

"And how do I know that you are not just as extreme? You abducted me, bound me, have me imprisoned in this office. Bastan showed me nothing but kindness in his village."

Dregen chuckled. "I laugh because you are ready to believe a fool with circumstantial evidence, and this whole decay of civilized life started with a fool with circumstantial evidence. Tell me, did your planet ever burn hydrocarbons for energy? Or use nuclear power?"

"When my race was younger we did a number of things with undesirable environmental consequences."

"So did you stop your wicked ways and go back to a simpler life, or did you destroy your planet?"

"We found alternative methods to harness energy. We developed technology to help control our weather and eco system. We learned that advancement in science can be done in harmony with environment."

"So did we." Dregen said. "Let me tell you another history Jean Luc Picard. At the beginning of the end of my world a scientist named Neshan petitioned the world parliament and was given a hearing. He told the governing body, in a world wide broadcast, that the continued emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere would produce a warming effect with catastrophic effects on the environment. The world changed over night. Popular opinion forced industry to become cleaner. Of course this forced up energy prices, but that was blamed on resource scarcity, not regulations. Every warm summer, every cold winter, and every major storm was blamed on industry and their evil pollutants. Meanwhile there was no serious scientific research done into why the weather patterns and temperature changes did not follow Neshan's predictions. Warming occurred, yes, but not in a manner consisted with the carbon dioxide theory. Some scientists tried to debunk the theory, showing that anomalies in local weather were just that, anomalies. But these findings were written off as industry lies. The misunderstanding of the facts was too well engrained in the people's minds and too politically convenient for our leaders. Fear mongers, claiming a simpler way of life was the only solution to revive our dieing planet, eventually led mobs of people through our cities and burned them to the ground. Ironically, those fires spewed more pollution into the atmosphere than our race had in its entire existence. The fearful, calling themselves the Eco, claimed the surface. The few of us that clung to science and technology came here. That is the true history of Raef, Jean Luc Picard."

"But your planet is still dieing." Picard replied. "You can't ignore that. Something had to have caused it. If not green house gasses, then what?"

"Life came to this planet too late Jean Luc Picard. Our sun is heating up and expanding as stars do when as they age. Our civilization formed just as our planet was being pushed out of that golden temperate zone in which life thrives."

"Then you don't believe your industrialization had any effect on your environment?"

"I never said that. Locally of course it can. Look at the cavern, technology makes it habitable, and technology could make it uninhabitable. Do I think we as a race could effect climate change on a global scale? I don't know; this planet has never had a stable environment. I do know nature can do it much more efficiently and drastically with no help from us."

"So why have you kidnapped me?" Picard asked. "If you don't believe you're your technology caused the warming of your planet, I doubt you expect my technology to stop it."

"We did not kidnap you Jean Luc Picard, and we expect nothing from you. Bastan is an ignorant fool, but he is not and idiot. He would have figured out you were not Eco, and then he would have killed you. We saved your life."

"Then why bound me and blindfold me?"

"You thought of us as Destroyers, did you not? Minutes ago you were ready to believe Bastan's version of history over my own. I am sorry, but we had to make sure you were not a danger to us."

"Then I am free to go?" Picard asked.

"If you like, but you are also welcome to explore our underground metropolis."

Picard nodded. "I have to ask, do you take the Eco's children?"

Dregen was silent for a moment. "Yes." He finally said. "In a generation there will be no more Eco. It has now become too warm for a child to survive to adulthood on the surface, so we take them, raise them, and give them a future best we can. We thought it inhumane to allow children to die for their parent's misunderstanding."


End file.
